Epileptic Pine Tree
by meefgal
Summary: [[Set during the episode Sock Opera.]] All that sleep loss, combined with staring at that computer monitor nonstop, can have some drastic effects on a person. Especially for this twelve year old epileptic Pine Tree. (Not at ALL meant to be offensive. However if it strikes you as such, please tell me and I'll remove it!)


"Dipper! I told you to get some sleep last night!" Mabel scolded her brother as he walked in with a yawn. "Here, wake up with some Mabel juice. It has plastic dinosaurs in it!" She shook a cup full of the concoction up with a grin.

"Mabel, no." He mumbled and rubbed his eyes a little. "I have something to talk to you about."

"Sup, bro-bro?" She hopped off her chair and followed as Dipper gestured to the hallway just outside the kitchen, out of earshot of their Grunkle.

"Last night I had a dream with Bill in it." He said seriously, looking at her with bloodshot-tired eyes. If she wasn't concerned for him before, she was definitely at attention now.

"Whoa, hold up, the triangle guy?" she made a triangle gesture with her hands…

OoOoO

Once Mabel was back on board the sock puppet train, Stan tried to confront her about what had happened in the kitchen.

"So uh, Mabel," he said, almost awkwardly. He shuffled his feet. "Where's Dipper?"

"He went upstairs to obsess some more over that laptop of his." She spoke quickly, through gritted teeth, as she worked on retouching the paint on a set piece.

"How long has he been working on that laptop?" Stan frowned at her.

"A few days." She mumbled, not looking up.

"Yeesh… And he didn't get any sleep last night?"

"He got a little."

"Your parents told me sleep deprivation triggers his epilepsy."

"He took his medicine. He should be-"

Stan rattled the medicine container, measuring out two pills each morning and evening per day of the week.

"He didn't. Not last night nor this morning."

Mabel was immediately at attention, head shooting up with wide eyes.

"Oh…" she stared at the medicine container for a second or two before she put her paint brush down and got to her feet, taking the container and trotting into the kitchen. After grabbing the jug of Mabel Juice, she bolted up the stairs. Stan followed her at a slightly slower pace.

OoOoO

"_Tick tock, kid!"_

Bill held out his hand, simultaneously igniting it in a blue flame. Dipper glanced from the black, thin hand, over to the laptop. His face relaxed from the worry it held moments before, and his jaw went lax, mouth hanging open. His shoulders lost tension and his arms hung loosely at his sides.

"_Come on, let's go, we don't have forever!"_ Bill prompted again, hovering slightly closer. Dipper remained quiet for a couple more seconds, before his eyelids began to flutter up and down, his fingers twitching. A slightly unnerving choked laugh came from the boy, although his face did not change to one of happiness commonly accompanying a laugh.

The dream demon before him withdrew his hand and extinguished the flame, squinting his eye a little. _"Kid?"_ he called, almost tentatively. The laptop was in the final ten seconds.

Dipper's legs began shaking, and then the rest of his form. The Dreamscape began to shake and blur, startling Bill a little. Dipper's form became translucent and unclear.

"_Whoa, whoa, kid!"_ He spoke up over the blurry sound—if a sound could be blurry, that was how it would sound—buzzing loudly over the laptop and Dipper's laugh.

Rather suddenly, Bill was thrown out of Dipper's mind, as the child woke from his short sleep.

OoOoO

"Dip! Dipper!" Mabel cried as she nearly sprinted across the attic to get to her fallen brother. He was collapsed, and his body was shaking in a rather violent seizure. There was drool on his chin from his mouth, and he was making that choked laughing sound.

After putting the medicine container and Mabel Juice down, she grabbed him and gently set him to he was on his side, head resting on her lap. She kept her eyes on his face, his fluttering eyelids and quivering lips, as she took deep breaths and tried to calm her frightened heart. Stan had frozen on the top steps when he saw, and allowed Mabel to handle it, figuring she would know better how to deal with this than he would ever.

"Stan, wet towels and tissues." Mabel nearly barked at him, and without hesitation he was back down the stairs getting the demanded items.

It felt like several minutes, but it was hardly thirty seconds before Dipper's seizure calmed and stopped. His eyes remained fully open, his shaking stopped, and his body tensed up again in surprise of regaining control. He took deep breaths, and Mabel gently squeezed his shoulder, trying to ease him.

"I—uh-" He turned his head a little to look up at her. The saliva in his throat caused him to burst into coughs, covering his mouth.

"Easy, Dipper!" Stan came back upstairs with a Kleenex box and two dampened towels. He placed the box by Dipper, who grabbed a couple tissues to wipe his mouth and chin off, still coughing and choking weakly.

Mabel held back her urge to hug him, tearing up as she grabbed tissues as well and wiped some saliva off her skirt. Dipper noticed and his eyes widened.

"I forgot my medicine." He mumbled kind of tiredly and looked between his twin and Stan. Mabel couldn't hold back a little laugh.

"A little late there, buddy." She mumbled. "You sore?"

"Kind of." He rolled his shoulders and looked down. "Sorry about your skirt. Pretty gross."

"Don't even apologize, it's totally fine!" She regained her cheerful tone and gave him a playful shoulder punch, to which he weakly smiled and took one of the damp towels to bury his face into and calm down a little more. Mabel got up to get the meds and juice from the top of the staircase.

"Don't freak us out like that, kid." Stan commented, looking pretty grump. "I mean, there comes a point where you have to put the technology down and get some shut-eye, y'know?"

"It was probably a sign." Dipper sighed and glanced at the now-black laptop screen. The timer had run out many minutes ago by now, and while that did sadden him, he was pretty sure he deserved it after failing to take care of himself for that long.

"It's before noon, you can still carry on like normal if you take this morning's medicine. Are you good to take these yet?" Mabel asked as she shoved the Mabel Juice and medicine container to him.

Dipper just nodded and took the morning pills, then washed it down with a swig or two of the juice without question. Stan scratched the back of his neck.

"Now is a good time to call your parents, I think." He nodded and got back up. "Mabel, help your brother down the stairs."

"Got it!" She helped him stand, and he gratefully leaned on her and rubbed his sore eyes as she helped her sore brother down the steps to the TV. He wasn't going anywhere for the rest of the day.

OoOoO

I based most of this fanfiction around my own experiences with my epileptic little brother, 'cept for the whole Bill thing. {:3 Apologies for any inaccuracies or errors in the writing, I haven't written proper stories like this in a long while so it's probably a little choppy!

I was gonna write a little follow-up on Bill's point of view watching Mabel and Stan care for Dipper after the epilepsy, but no matter how I wrote it, it sounded offensive somehow. I'll leave it up to y'all to decide how he reacted to that :')


End file.
